Page 55 - WTP Vol.VII #2

Steve read them aloud, and I was voted the winner. He called me up front to receive the prize. He held his closed fist high and then opened it, offering me a book of matches from the Howard Johnson’s where we had just stopped.
I thought it was funny. I liked that kind of joke, but Linda was angry, sat straight up in her seat, clutched her purse, and looked out the window.
When we arrived in Williamsburg, the bus took us for a preview of the colonial village we would see the next day: the apothecary. Linda pushed me to the front of the demonstration where an actor in a lab coat and white wig opened a surgical kit containing amputation saws, arrow removers, a tonsil guillotine, and a circum- cision knife. Then he displayed a jar of leeches and de- scribed bloodletting. The live leeches bounced back and forth in the water as he tilted it. I was already queasy, but when he placed the leech on his arm and it became engorged from sucking his blood, I had to leave. Linda took me to the porch where I sat on a bench next to a cigar-store Indian until my nausea passed.
“The nuns told us to keep our hands
clasped in prayer at our chests, but many boys had to cover their stiff- ening groins even as the body of Christ melted under their tongues.”
Linda and I stayed in a single room. On the first night, thinking I was asleep, Linda hung her dress in the closet, took off her bra and panties, opened the dress- er ... I couldn’t take my eyes off her breasts and the brown bush between her legs. She removed a night- gown from the drawer and dropped it over her head. I was frozen with what, desire? I had had erections, but they rose and fell without ejaculation. I woke that night to my first wet dream.
We were exhausted at the end of the next day from the constant touring of museums and battlefields. Linda said she was going to bed early and put on her nightgown in the bathroom. I was in bed, my pillows propped up against the headboard and watching
The Life of Riley. William Bendix kept saying to his coworker Gillis, “What a revoltin’ development this is!” Linda sat next to me in order to better see the TV and asked if I was enjoying the tour. She said she was glad that the hotel had served pistachio ice cream, my favorite, for dessert and she mentioned the book of matches. I again said it was amusing, but I saw she had wanted the prize to be one of many highlights
of this trip. She said, “Don’t worry, I’ll buy you a real cigarette lighter.”
I started to get an erection, I couldn’t help it. It hap- pened all the time, even in church, coming back from the altar after receiving communion. The nuns told us to keep our hands clasped in prayer at our chests, but many boys had to cover their stiffening groins even as
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